Gold, Oil, Vietnam and Iraq

“The U.S. was supposed to keep inflation down. Until about 1965, it did just that,” says Michael Bordo, an economics professor at Rutgers University. “But around 1965, inflation took off.”

By 1971, the rising cost of the Vietnam War, coupled with President Johnson’s Great Society programs, had increased inflation and forced President Nixon to effectively rescind the U.S. gold standard and allow the dollar to float freely.